17 of the Best Historically Accurate Movies and SeriesLike this list

17 items

• 12 Years a Slave

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  Solomon Northup, a free Black man, is abducted in the North and forced to endure twelve years of nslavement in the antebellum South.

• The Pianist

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  Based on a true memoir, Polish Jewish musician Władysław Szpilman fights to survive the destruction and terror of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and the Holocaust.

• Gandhi

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  A detailed biographical epic covering 55 years of Mahatma Gandhi's life.

• Chernobyl

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  The series chronicles the 1986 Soviet nuclear disaster in Ukraine, detailing the catastrophic accident, the cover-up attempts, and the desperate efforts by scientists and cleanup crews to contain the fallout.

• Selma

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  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists organize and execute the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, facing violent resistance to secure passage of the Voting Rights Act.

• Apollo 13

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  NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy.

• Schindler's List

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  German industrialist Oskar Schindler exploits the Holocaust by hiring Jewish workers to save them from death in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

• Hidden Figures

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  Three brilliant Black female mathematicians at NASA's segregated facility play a vital, but largely uncredited, role in launching astronaut John Glenn into orbit during the Space Race.

• The Crown. The Complete First Season

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  The first season of a series charting the years of Queen Elizabeth II's unexpected reign.

• Lion

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  Separated from his family in rural India as a young child, Saroo Brierley is adopted by an Australian family and later uses Google Earth as an adult to search for his birth village.

• Band of Brothers

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  Based on the accounts of real soldiers, and highly regarded for its intense commitment to historical detail, uniforms, battle locations, and the overall experience of the war, this miniseries follows the Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Rush

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  The intense and dangerous 1970s rivalry between charismatic British playboy James Hunt and methodical Austrian champion Niki Lauda dominates the world of Formula 1 racing.

• Glory

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  Colonel Robert Gould Shaw leads the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first official African American units in the U.S. Civil War, as they fight for the Union and equality.

• Dallas Buyers Club

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  Real-life Texan electrician Ron Woodroof establishes an underground network to smuggle unapproved AIDS drugs into the U.S. after being diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1985.

• Captain Phillips

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  The commander of a U.S. cargo ship, Captain Richard Phillips, is taken hostage by Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea, leading to a tense stand-off and rescue mission.

• Dunkirk

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  A massive effort is launched to evacuate hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, as they are surrounded by German forces in the early days of World War II.

• Letters From Iwo Jima

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  This film explores the grueling and desperate Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Imperial Japanese soldiers stationed on the island, facing an inevitable defeat.